1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for removing the cores from food products and for breaking food products into smaller pieces. More particularly, this invention relates to a toroidal shaped impact assembly for use in a hydraulic food cutting machine.
2. Background Art
Peppers, more particularly bell peppers, of whatever color, red, green or yellow, jalapeno peppers and pimento peppers have traditionally been thought of as vegetables. They are actually a fruit, in that they are the developed ovary of the blossom of the flowering plant. As such, they are connected at one end to the stem of the blossom, and at the other end, the blossom end, are found the remains of the petals and stamen of the original blossom. Contained within the developed ovary, or fruit, are the developed seeds caused by fertilization of the ovule that were originally contained within the undeveloped ovary.
Commercial processing of peppers has always been a difficult, labor intensive and time consuming process. The primary problem was how to remove the pepper core consisting of the stem end, seed pod and seeds, hereinafter collectively referred to as the core. Two basic methods have been developed to core peppers.
The first method involves the use of some sort of a rotating coring knife, over which the pepper is positioned, stem down, so that the coring knife can bore in cutting out the core and the seed pod. The second method is in more common use today, particularly where there is no need to retain the original configuration of the pepper as a unitary piece. This method involves crushing the peppers and then hand sorting out either the broken usable pieces, or the opposite, hand separating the remains of the cores. The broken pieces are then washed and usually conveyed on for further processing, such as dicing, for inclusion in prepared food products whether canned, frozen, freeze dried or whatever.
A common characteristic to peppers which enables the crushing process to be used, is the fact that the wall of the pepper is brittle enough in its cellular composition that it will break, after some initial plastic deformation, if enough force is impacted against the wall of the pepper.
These two prior art methods and processes for coring peppers can generally be described as mechanical approaches, since they both involve the use of mechanical machines to either crush the peppers or to bore out the stem and core.
Not used in the prior art is a second category of food cutting apparatus, generally known as the hydraulic food cutter. Hydraulic food cutters are used primarily in the potato industry to cut french fries. In general terms, they include a vortex or feed tank containing water into which whole potatoes are conveyed and dumped. A centrifugal food pump draws suction from the tank, and pumps the water and suspended potatoes into an acceleration tube, which is the converging end of the venturi. The food product is then accelerated in the venturi, and impinges upon a fixed array of stationary blades which cut the potato into pieces, usually french fries. The cut food pieces and water then pass into a deceleration tube, which is the divergent end of the venturi, from where they are deposited onto a dewatering conveyor.
The water passes through the dewatering conveyor to a collection tray, and is eventually recycled back into the feed tank. The cut food pieces, or french fries, do not pass through the conveyor, and are conveyed off for further processing.
Hydraulic food cutting devices are high capacity cutting machines and are not labor intensive, usually only requiring one operator to monitor hydraulic cutter operation.
Hydraulic food cutting devices have not been used in the past to cut peppers because of the absence of a workable cutting blade for peppers.
An object of the present invention is to develop an impact assembly which can be used within a hydraulic cutter machine for purposes of breaking peppers into pieces and removing the cores and seed pods therefrom. The second object of the present invention is to develop a modified hydro cutting system wherein the dewatering conveyor can be used for enhanced seed separation and a flotation tank can be used for core and stem separation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus that can be used to concentrate the number of solids suspended in a fluid medium flowing through a venturi without significantly reducing the speed of pressure parameters of the fluid as it passes through the venturi.